There was a feature called "Balance of the Force". This was the most interesting bonus to me. It was explaining the story and what has happened and why things have happened. Never before they needed or tried to explain what has happened in a movie and release it day and date with the first home theater release.

I find his analysis of New Hope... amusing. The after shock of Nixon... LOL... by 1977 we forgot about Nixon and was still talking about that Playboy interview with Jimmy Carter (with the centerfold that would be the future wife of Jimmy Connors). Star Wars... prescient... LOL.

Executive Producer

In one of these threads (I don't remember which one) we previously discussed the harassment of Kelly Marie Tran which led her off social media.

She has now written a really good op-ed for The New York Times about the situation and where she is with her self-image now. It's a really good piece, and I'm happy that she seems to be in a good place.

Kelly Marie Tran said:

It wasn’t their words, it’s that I started to believe them.

Their words seemed to confirm what growing up as a woman and a person of color already taught me: that I belonged in margins and spaces, valid only as a minor character in their lives and stories.

Executive Producer

There's this ugly strain of Star Wars fandom that feels entitled to be cruel and actively hostile against things they don't perceive to be "correct" for Star Wars, and it's disgusting and so disheartening to witness. It's been going on for ages too - when the special editions came out in 1997, it wasn't enough that some people didn't like them. People openly and loudly berated George Lucas, and explicitly accused him of "raping my childhood" (their words, not mine). That kind of language is just not called for, and in and of itself, it might not seem like a big deal, but I think that was an opening signal that common decency was not a consideration for these select few "fans". I think rape is one of the most abominable and horrible crimes that one human can commit against another, and for these people to equate adding a new special effect with rape shows a truly disturbing perspective.

Jake Lloyd was tortured by so-called Star Wars fans at his school when he went back after filming Phantom Menace. They made fun of him, harassed him, and physically abused him, repeatedly, for years. For the "crime" of being in a movie they didn't like parts of.

Ahmet Best was nearly driven to suicide by so-called Star Wars fans. For the "crime" of delivering exactly the performance that his director asked of him.

Hayden Christensen no longer acts after torrents of abuse by so-called Star Wars fans. For the "crime" of delivering exactly the performance that his director asked of him.

Though she's responded with grace and by holding her head high, Daisy Ridley has also been subject to torrents of abuse from so-called fans. I guess for the "crime" of being a female actor who responded to a casting notice calling for a female actor.

I wish I could say I was surprised by the abuse directed at Kelly Marie Tran, but sadly, it's part of a long running pattern. It's the kind of thing that makes me embarrassed to be a fan. While it may be a small segment of the total group, these so-called fans often speak the loudest, and I don't like the possibility that I could be lumped in with them, or that I could be considered okay with those attitudes and views because I still consider myself a fan.

Executive Producer

It’s not that Christensen stopped getting roles; it’s that he declined to pursue further roles for an extended period of time due to the pervasive harassment he received in his personal life from so-called Star Wars fans who didn’t like his performance and therefore felt entitled to bully him.

Lead Actor

Hmm. This confirms there never was an overall outline for the three movie trilogy. An absolutely dangerous concept (no safety net) but we got TLJ one of the best SW films ever made so I guess I can't complain.
Here is JJ on what he found so shocking about TLJ:
"What I loved about [Johnson’s] approach was that he was just subverting expectations everywhere you looked,” Abrams told Fox 5 D.C. “And I think that maybe the biggest surprise … you think Luke dying maybe was the biggest surprise or — I guess spoiler alert — Ren killing Snoke, there were certain things that felt like they were … weirdly, for me, the thing that was the most surprising was Phasma dying … that was one of those characters I thought was [there for] something else … Look, no one wants a character to die, and yet, I know that when we had Kylo Ren kill Han Solo, that was done because Harrison always knew that there needed to be utility for the character, and he had famously always wanted Han to die and serve that purpose. [And] it felt like this was a way to begin to define Kylo Ren, not just a way to kill a character. So I can see why Rian chose to do that with some of these characters. But I guess for me the biggest surprise, weirdly, was Phasma dying the way she did.”

There was not even an outline for one movie, The Force Awakens. They made it from the bottom up. They said we need this character, this character and this character. Now lets try to connect and make a story around them.

As JJ Abrams says, reading Rian Johnson's Script and being clueless about the direction, or path of major characters proves the "mystery box" concept. If there was an outline, Abrams would have known before reading Rian's script about their direction from the outline. Outlines hammer home major plot points you know.